Back Away from that Spreadsheet: Why Excel Isn’t a Donor Database
Idealware just published a new article of mine, on a subject that comes up whenever I teach workshops for small nonprofits: "Why not use Excel as my donor database?"
The article, Back Away from that Spreadsheet: Why Excel Isn't a Donor Database is available now, and offers some good reasons to move your donor data to a more robust system and out of those old spreadsheets.
Filed in Donor Databases,TechSoup 2 Comments so far
Bill Connors on 19 Aug 2009 at 4:31 pm #
Good article, Robert, I agree! May I suggest you write a sequel about why organizations that already have a donor database shouldn’t use Excel for donor data as well? Event prospects and attendees, major gifts prospects, institutional donors and prospects, other prospects–they should all be in the donor database too. It’s called a “donor” database not just because it’s only for donors but because we want everyone in it to be a donor. Prospects go in too. Thanks.
Dan Cooperstock on 20 Aug 2009 at 7:20 pm #
Great article, Robert.
You might be interested to see my closely related article, titled “Why not to create a do-it-yourself donation tracking and receipting system”, on the Canadian charities website CharityVillage, at http://www.charityvillage.com/cv/research/rdbm4.html. I wrote it a bit over a year ago.
It’s a bit Canadian focussed (though not at all exclusively so), and more about low-level donor management systems (like my DONATION program) than about serious fundraising systems, which you were talking about, but I think you and the readers of your article may still find it quite interesting.